His eyes were tearing up, but I thought it was from the
smell of the gasoline.

I
lit a match, held it out from my body. “Second choice.”

“Spitting in your face.”

I
leaned in to accommodate him, threw the match, watching in fascination as
the flames dance up and down his body as I wiped the spittle from my
eye.

***

“It’s done then,” Tolland said. I saw the shield in his
wallet as he paid for our drinks.

“It wasn’t pretty.”

“Neither was what he did to those girls.” He handed me the
money in a brown envelope. “This your first time frying
someone?”

I
started counting the money. “First with fire. And last.”

“Affected you, huh?”

I
stopped counting, my hands were shaking. I hoped he didn’t notice as I
placed the envelope in my suit jacket.

***

The news was on as I was packing my bags. I’d just double
checked my plane ticket back to Florida when the newscaster said that
they’d found another burned up girl on the canal path. I poured myself a
double Scotch and sat down on the motel bed, turned the volume up on the
TV.

I
called the airline after the news story, cancelled my flight, unpacked my
bags.

***

I
found Tolland seated at the bar, staring into a rocks glass. He drank the
same brand of Scotch as me.

“I
thought you’d be back in Florida by now,” he said. It’d taken him a little
while to recognize me. The wet rings on the wood in front of him explained
why.

“The jobs not done, you must have seen the news.”

He
put his elbows on the bar, placed his head between his hands. “Probably a
copycat. It happens all the time.”

I
ordered a round for the both of us. “It wasn’t a copycat.”

“You can keep the money. You did what we paid you to
do.”

“It’s not about the money.”

He
took a long pull from the fresh Scotch. “You don’t have to run off to a
shrink. Believe me when I tell you the guy you fried was a real lowlife.
He liked to rape little girls.”

“But he didn’t set them on fire.”

He
looked at me. He had a hard time focusing at first. “Who’d have thought,
morals coming from you. Vincent ‘Dial Tone’ Bilancia. I know how you got
your nick-name you know.”

I
looked around, but we were pretty much alone at the bar, so I didn’t stop
him.

“You made your bones in the late eighties, before cell
phones got big, right. You did what, two or three big time hits. Had the
marks call Mazzucco’s before you did the deed. Told the old man to call
back in a few minutes. All he’d get was a dial tone signal.”

“You got the wrong guy, Tolland.” I pushed the chair away,
left my untouched Scotch next to a twenty as I walked toward the bar’s
front door.

“No I didn’t Bilancia. I got the right guy. Just not the one
we were looking for.”

***

I
found Reilly right where I expected, another bar, seedier than the one the
cops hung out at. “Hear about the guy setting little girls on fire?” I
asked.

“I
heard they had to cool a suspect down with a fire extinguisher before they
could check the dental records.”

“I
need you to help me find the guy doing the deed.”

“I
don’t do work for the mob anymore, didn’t anybody tell you?”

I
ordered two scotches, unsure if Reilly drank it, but figuring he could use
a bracer in case I had to get persuasive. I did, in the ally behind the
bar. Knowing he was indirectly working for the police probably eased the
pain caused by loose teeth.

***

Tolland stopped by the hotel room. I made a mental note to
check into another place first thing in the morning. I hadn’t told him
where I was staying.

“Heard you got that fuck up private investigator looking for
the guy with the matches,” he said, sitting at the chair in front of the
desk, uninvited.

“I’m not too good with investigating, but I’d probably be
head of the detective bureau if I was wearing a badge in your
department.”

“You’re wasting your money on him. What’s he gonna find that
we can’t?”

“This guy deserves to be taken out. And I’m gonna do it. But
no one should go out the way that poor guy I lit up.”

“He’s going up like a goddamned roman candle if anyone on
the force gets a hold of him. One of the little girls was a retired
lieutenant’s granddaughter.”

“You should probably just let it ride, Tolland. Let justice
take its course.”

“You’re making me nervous, with all this talk about justice
and crap; and you shouldn’t make a guy who you has shit on get in that
state of mind. Especially when he’s a cop.”

I
didn’t even bother checking out; I just packed my bags and went to another
hotel. Tolland must have figured out the fake name I was using. The added
expense of two hotel rooms was worth the cost of Tolland thinking he knew
where I was.

***

I
had a message on my cell phone from Reilly, I must have been out of range.

“Anything on the pyro?” I asked when he answered.

“I
didn’t dig anything up myself, but I’ve got a police scanner in my office.
Tolland’s getting pretty obtuse on the radio, but I think I figured
through his verbal hieroglyphics he’s bringing the guy down to the canal
where they found the last girl.”

***

I
don’t know what kind of fire accelerator Tolland used on the guy, but
whatever it was; it didn’t go out after he jumped into the canal. It kept
incinerating him as he struggled in the water, trying to figure out if he
was drowning or burning alive.

I’d gotten there in time to catch the last part of the show,
but too late to do anything about it. I thought about pulling out my gun
and putting the guy out of his misery. I saw a show on the Discovery
channel where a bullet won’t penetrate into water more than a foot or so,
but that wasn’t the reason I didn’t give it a try. The look in Tolland’s
eyes did it.

***

Against my better judgment, I agreed to have a drink with
Tolland in a bar at Newark Airport. He’d left a message at the hotel he
thought I was staying at. I chose the airport because it would be crowded
and he couldn’t get a gun in while I waited for my flight to
Florida.

They didn’t carry our brand so I ordered a couple of Johnny
Walker Blacks on the rocks.

“You were wrong, Bilancia. I got a good eight solid hours of
sleep after the fireworks display.”

He
said something else but I wasn’t listening to him. Something caught my
attention from the TV behind the bar. I asked the bartender to turn the
sound up. They’d found another body of a burned girl, in a park a couple
of miles from the canal.

“I
don’t ever want to talk to you again, Tolland,” I said. This time I caught
my flight.

The End

Copyright(c)
2006 by Pat Lambe

Pat Lambe has
had short stories in various web sites and magazines, as well as
short stories in the Plots with Guns anthology and the upcoming
Dublin Noir anthology due out in March from Akashik Books. His short
story 'Union Card' was listed as a distinguished mystery story in
The Best American Mystery Stories of 2005. He's currently working on
a novel and hopes to make enough money to invest in a compound in
Montana and a harem or
two.